Anonymous goes on DDoS rampage after MegaUpload shutdown

The loosely knit online hacker collective went on the rampage yesterday afternoon after news broke that several Megaupload.com staff members had been arrested, including its founder Kim Dotcom. They are…

I am concerned that this brand of "hackivism" is not going to accomplish much but embolden lobbyists to push for further legislation; and the next time it may be to allow the government to turn off an individual's service to the internet if your IP is detected in a DDoS flood.

Unless there is super-secret research on the horizon on DDoS attack mitigation, I'm not sure what choice Anonymous is giving law enforcement. Trying to throw bandwidth at the problem is a losing battle, as Anonymous seems to be able to increase their botnet power faster than most websites can keep up.

This is fact. Knocking out one server which highly likely has multiple redundancies, as well as additional protection to reduce the effect of DDoS attacks in a very short space of time is a feat in itself. Doing that to 14 different websites inside a few hours is without question wielding an enormous amount of power. Reports suggest Anonymous were launching an attack on some websites within 15 minutes of the news breaking.

For a loosely-knit group of hackers, that is a display worthy of the comment I made. It would be impossible for someone at least half informed not to feel they sent a strong message.

I realise no server is infallible in regards to DDoS protection, but these websites have been targets for a while now, and will have put policies in place to further protect themselves from DDoS attacks.

"After public support had all but eroded they needed something to justify their fight against piracy and 'cyber criminals' to the masses. "
This is a completely unsubstantiated claim.

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Its not unsubstantiated at all. Public support in general is against SOPA and PIPA.

The withdrawal by over a dozen Senators from the proposed Protect IP Act as it is currently written on Wednesday highlights the general consensus of the constituents in their respective localities.

My point in the article was the timing of the FBI raid on Megaupload. It was almost perfect in respect to the timing after the events of the previous day. It is entirely possible authorities predicted the response it would receive, and therefore timed it exactly when they did as a means to provide further evidence of the legislation being required further down the line. Time will tell on that, as always.

This article is all personal. Right down to posting the video. Nothing from the other side. No quotes from DoJ as to how they feel about the attacks. In fact it seems nobody nowhere has been quoted from the "Law" side of this extravaganza. Of course anything they would say would be deemed an insult to the Anonymous and would cause them to retaliate further.

It is not fact. Something like this cannot be a fact. It can be a fact that someone said it was awe inspiring and you can quote them, but an event cannot be inherently awe inspiring.

Like the previous person posted, it is all personal. This is ok, I suppose, if that is your intention. But, I typically enjoy techspot over sites like slashgear and neowin because techspot will leave out this sort of thing and report in a more objective manner.

"they needed something to justify their fight"
This is speculation and conjecture. Have you interviewed anyone from the senate, house, mpaa, riaa? No; you have made an assumption. Just because public support is obvious doesn't lead to these conclusions, and even if it did, that is not your job as a journalist to come to the conclusions. You report the news and let the readers come to conclusions.

I didn't mean to get rough. You can pass this all off if you don't consider that to be your job, or consider yourself a journalist. Maybe that is the case.

chazz said:
They launched attacks within 15 minutes. Meaning they probably didn't even read the Indictment. Doesn't sound worthy of praise to me. Jumping to conclusions is never a good thing.

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With people who have issues with their reading skills, probably it will take more then 15 minutes to read but these are hackers, whether mild, advanced or newbies (script kiddies or what ever some people call them) I am sure they read quite fast.

Isnt it funny. A loose knit group of cyber-****** crashes some websites. Yea thats going to change public opinion.....not! Really the ANON ppl are pretty damn dumb in general. AT some point everything you do on a computer is tracked somehow and someway. Eventually they are going to get caught. So you crashed some websites whoopee!! ANON's actions are no more effective then
a little kid prank calling someone. If ANON wants to be taken seriously they need to take actions that do little more then inconvence ppl. It looks more like ANON is throwing a temper tantrum then doing anything radical. WAH! WAH! You arrested someone!! So im going to DDoS your websites. ANON seems to forget that the world ran non stop before the internet. And if the internet goes down...I guess ppl will have to actually do something radical....face to face communication lol.

mevans336 said:
I am concerned that this brand of "hackivism" is not going to accomplish much but embolden lobbyists to push for further legislation; and the next time it may be to allow the government to turn off an individual's service to the internet if your IP is detected in a DDoS flood.

Unless there is super-secret research on the horizon on DDoS attack mitigation, I'm not sure what choice Anonymous is giving law enforcement. Trying to throw bandwidth at the problem is a losing battle, as Anonymous seems to be able to increase their botnet power faster than most websites can keep up.

"This article is all personal. Right down to posting the video. Nothing from the other side. No quotes from DoJ as to how they feel about the attacks. In fact it seems nobody nowhere has been quoted from the "Law" side of this extravaganza. Of course anything they would say would be deemed an insult to the Anonymous and would cause them to retaliate further."

ANON is doing a great job in my opinion making people think about what their actuly doing by crashing those site's they basicly said look this is what your planning on doing to the world... If SOPA, PIPA actuly do go through... well u can basicly wave good by to the internet... well atleast any freedom the government deems unworthy of your viewing...

chazz said:
They launched attacks within 15 minutes. Meaning they probably didn't even read the Indictment. Doesn't sound worthy of praise to me. Jumping to conclusions is never a good thing.

Click to expand...

With people who have issues with their reading skills, probably it will take more then 15 minutes to read but these are hackers, whether mild, advanced or newbies (script kiddies or what ever some people call them) I am sure they read quite fast.

Took me 5 minutes to read, though I skimmed through some bits ...

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Reading skills has nothing to do with it. It will take time for multiple people to read, understand, form a consensus and then plan a coordinated attack. With the speed of this I'm quite sure this was just a knee jerk reaction to reading a article.